The
Communist Manifesto foresaw the predatory and polarised global
capitalism of the 21st century. But Marx and Engels also showed us
that we have the power to create a better world.
by
Yanis Varoufakis
Part
3 - The manifesto remains a source of hope not to be dismissed
Anyone
reading the manifesto today will be surprised to discover a picture
of a world much like our own, teetering fearfully on the edge of
technological innovation. In the manifesto’s time, it was the steam
engine that posed the greatest challenge to the rhythms and routines
of feudal life. The peasantry were swept into the cogs and wheels of
this machinery and a new class of masters, the factory owners and the
merchants, usurped the landed gentry’s control over society.
Now, it
is artificial intelligence and automation that loom as disruptive
threats, promising to sweep away “all fixed, fast-frozen
relations”. “Constantly revolutionising … instruments of
production,” the manifesto proclaims, transform “the whole
relations of society”, bringing about “constant
revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all
social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation”.
For Marx
and Engels, however, this disruption is to be celebrated. It acts as
a catalyst for the final push humanity needs to do away with our
remaining prejudices that underpin the great divide between those who
own the machines and those who design, operate and work with them.
“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is
profaned,” they write in the manifesto of technology’s
effect, “and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses,
his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind”.
By ruthlessly vaporising our preconceptions and false certainties,
technological change is forcing us, kicking and screaming, to face up
to how pathetic our relations with one another are.
Today,
we see this reckoning in millions of words, in print and online, used
to debate globalisation’s discontents. While celebrating how
globalisation has shifted billions from abject poverty to relative
poverty, venerable western newspapers, Hollywood personalities,
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, bishops and even multibillionaire
financiers all lament some of its less desirable ramifications:
unbearable inequality, brazen greed, climate change, and the
hijacking of our parliamentary democracies by bankers and the
ultra-rich.
None of
this should surprise a reader of the manifesto. “Society as a
whole,” it argues, “is more and more splitting up into two
great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each
other.” As production is mechanised, and the profit margin of
the machine-owners becomes our civilisation’s driving motive,
society splits between non-working shareholders and non-owner
wage-workers. As for the middle class, it is the dinosaur in the
room, set for extinction.
At the
same time, the ultra-rich become guilt-ridden and stressed as they
watch everyone else’s lives sink into the precariousness of
insecure wage-slavery. Marx and Engels foresaw that this supremely
powerful minority would eventually prove “unfit to rule”
over such polarised societies, because they would not be in a
position to guarantee the wage-slaves a reliable existence.
Barricaded in their gated communities, they find themselves consumed
by anxiety and incapable of enjoying their riches. Some of them,
those smart enough to realise their true long-term self-interest,
recognise the welfare state as the best available insurance policy.
But alas, explains the manifesto, as a social class, it will be in
their nature to skimp on the insurance premium, and they will work
tirelessly to avoid paying the requisite taxes.
Is this
not what has transpired? The ultra-rich are an insecure, permanently
disgruntled clique, constantly in and out of detox clinics,
relentlessly seeking solace from psychics, shrinks and
entrepreneurial gurus. Meanwhile, everyone else struggles to put food
on the table, pay tuition fees, juggle one credit card for another or
fight depression. We act as if our lives are carefree, claiming to
like what we do and do what we like. Yet in reality, we cry ourselves
to sleep.
Do-gooders,
establishment politicians and recovering academic economists all
respond to this predicament in the same way, issuing fiery
condemnations of the symptoms (income inequality) while ignoring the
causes (exploitation resulting from the unequal property rights over
machines, land, resources). Is it any wonder we are at an impasse,
wallowing in hopelessness that only serves the populists seeking to
court the worst instincts of the masses?
With the
rapid rise of advanced technology, we are brought closer to the
moment when we must decide how to relate to each other in a rational,
civilised manner. We can no longer hide behind the inevitability of
work and the oppressive social norms it necessitates. The manifesto
gives its 21st-century reader an opportunity to see through this mess
and to recognise what needs to be done so that the majority can
escape from discontent into new social arrangements in which “the
free development of each is the condition for the free development of
all”. Even though it contains no roadmap of how to get there, the
manifesto remains a source of hope not to be dismissed.
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